Tragedy on Sunset Boulevard

I have a friend who was driving with a friend on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, when he woke up in an ambulance.

Little by little, he came to know that he had been in a terrible car accident. His car had somehow gone into the other lane and collided with a pickup truck. His friend was killed and he was badly hurt.

But now the police were looking at him as the cause of the accident. The car had crossed the double line, and the police figured the driver had to be the reason for it, Since he was driving an exotic sports car capable of going more than 200 miles an hour, they supposed he had been hotrodding down Sunset Boulevard and lost control.

So they filed felony charges against him, and now he faced serious jail time if he was convicted.

During the accident, my friend had suffered serious brain injury and had no memory of what happened. For all he knew, the police could have been right.

He lawyered up in a hurry. He hired a crackerjack attorney (not us) and the best auto forensics expert in California. Inspecting the remains of the car, the expert was able to determine two important things:

At the time of the crash, the car had been going less than 30 miles an hour;

The car veered into the other lane because it had an electronic malfunction which caused a catastrophe.

Confronted with this evidence, the prosecutor dropped the charges and now my friend is suing the car manufacturer for the malfunction.

But if he not hired the crackerjack lawyer, he never would have found any of this out. He would be facing a jail sentence and - since he had no knowledge of his own - would probably have had a guilty conscience for the rest of his life.